The Second Rabbinic Bible edited by Jacob ben Chayyim (1525) was very influential but it wasn't the authority for the KJV. For example, KJV has a reading of Joshua 21:36-37 that departs from ben Chayyim. The KJV's reading is supported by many other editions of the Hebrew Bible that predate the KJV. Ben Chayyim's edition was printed in four large volumes, with the text broken up to two or three verses every two pages, and no chapter or verse numbers; so it would have been very inconvenient and unlikely to be used by the KJV translators. However numerous other Hebrew Bibles were published before the KJV, all of them using a text more-or-less similar to Ben-Chayyim's and some probably worked up with Ben-Chayyim's edition as a basis, with chapter and verses numbers (they first appeared in a Hebrew Bible published by Bomberg in 1547; G.F. Moore, The Vulgate Chapters and Numbered Verses in the Hebrew Bible, Jl. of Biblical Literature, 1893, vol. 12, p.76) and printed in more compact volumes than Ben-Chayyim's. I suppose that the KJV translators made use of one volume or two volume editions (possibly more than one edition) of the Hebrew Bible, with numbered chapters and verses, published after Ben-Chayyim's edition.
Did a KJV translator make use of Codex Vaticanus text?
- Thread starter logos1560
- Start date
Steven Avery
Well-known member
There are additional examples, but this is enough show that the Waite and Price usage of that claim is not scholarship. Shoonra is correct.
James Price played a con on his readers, using an unscholarly, false, errant claim as the basis of his defintion of an emendation.
You could see that he was playing a type of classical ad hominem approach (to the man, allowing the man's argument. not the modern usage), showing the absurdity of the Waite claim. However that does not allow him to change the accepted scholarship definition of emendation.
None dare call that scholarship.
You do not "answer" a scholarship con, you expose it for what it is.
Rick Norris does not understand the accepted use of the term, so he tries to defend the James Price blunder. Or, if he does understand, he hides that knowledge with a probabilism approach
Last edited:
Riplinger also claimed that the KJV translators used Ben-Chayyim, but more recently she's retracted that assertion.
I would say that, given the reputation of the Ben-Chayyim edition, especially since Ginsburg's work in the late 19th century, it would be easy to assume that such an esteemed edition would have been used for the equally esteemed KJV. But the assumption appears to be wrong. However, I do not infer any dishonest or even unscholarly motive in making that assumption. I think it's a very innocent and attractive mistake.
There is no particular advantage (or disadvantage) for assuming a connection between Ben-Chayyim's edition and the KJV. The KJV OT appears to be based on the Masoretic text, just one very slightly different from Ben-Chayyim's. [Yes, Ben-Chayyim's edition is not THE ONE AND ONLY Masoretic text, nor is the Biblia Hebraica; there is no ONE AND ONLY Masoretic text.]
I would say that, given the reputation of the Ben-Chayyim edition, especially since Ginsburg's work in the late 19th century, it would be easy to assume that such an esteemed edition would have been used for the equally esteemed KJV. But the assumption appears to be wrong. However, I do not infer any dishonest or even unscholarly motive in making that assumption. I think it's a very innocent and attractive mistake.
There is no particular advantage (or disadvantage) for assuming a connection between Ben-Chayyim's edition and the KJV. The KJV OT appears to be based on the Masoretic text, just one very slightly different from Ben-Chayyim's. [Yes, Ben-Chayyim's edition is not THE ONE AND ONLY Masoretic text, nor is the Biblia Hebraica; there is no ONE AND ONLY Masoretic text.]
Steven Avery
Well-known member
The Ben Hayim text was surely one of many sources used by the learned men of the AV.
The book by David Daiches (1912-2005) goes into their wide variety of Hebrew sources. The King James version of the English Bible: an account of the development and sources of the English Bible of 1611 with special reference to the Hebrew tradition, published in 1941. Likely unreferenced by James Price, who put his posturing over scholarship.
The Waite blunder is part of his attempt to claim specific Greek and Hebrew texts as above and beyond the AV, for which he will never use the word inspired scripture.
So there is an advantage, and a type of dishonesty, since he has kept to this error long after being corrected (e.g. correspondence with Peter Heisey.) If he wrote the truth on this question, he could not claim specific Hebrew editions (e.g. that published by TBS) as the pure and perfect, inspired word of God.
As for Gail Riplinger, it would be helpful to see a before and after.
Last edited:
Your allegation is false and improper. You are not entitled to attack the honesty of others. Dr. James D. Price clearly and honestly presented his definition of emendation as a sound, proper, scholarly response to actual KJV-only claims.
Not so much study has gone into Hebrew Bibles published after Ben-Chayyim's edition (1525) - unlike the several collations of variants in Greek NT editions - so it's very difficult to speculate about which Hebrew Bible edition(s) the KJV committee used. I would hazard a guess that it was a post-Ben-Chayyim edition that had the advantage of chapter and verse numbers and published more compactly than Ben-Chayyim's edition, but I cannot name an edition which fits that description altho several existed by the time the KJV was being worked up.
Riplinger's claim that the KJV used Ben-Chayyim appears in her book, Which Bible is God's Word? (1994) page 47:
... which was quite a trick, considering that Kittel died in 1929,. At one point she was selling copies of the Hebrew Bible edited by Letteris (and published by the B&FBS) and claiming it was Ben-Chayyim's text (which it wasn't), but she stopped doing that some years ago.
Riplinger's claim that the KJV used Ben-Chayyim appears in her book, Which Bible is God's Word? (1994) page 47:
... which was quite a trick, considering that Kittel died in 1929,. At one point she was selling copies of the Hebrew Bible edited by Letteris (and published by the B&FBS) and claiming it was Ben-Chayyim's text (which it wasn't), but she stopped doing that some years ago.
Steven Avery
Well-known member
Sure I am.
As long as they are not on this forum, I can speak the truth about any dishonest con scholar, including James Price.
He used a false and unscholarly definition of emendation.
See the next post, which has real scholarship that James Price ignored, and I believe deliberately, for the purpose of deception.
Last edited:
Steven Avery
Well-known member
If I remember, Daiches says they used many editions.
And I had the book, but my Singapore pastor friend traded for some, so I will have to check.
Speculating without the Daiches book, or quotes, is not very meaningful.
Here is something I wrote up in 2015 about the varied Hebraic sources (not the direct Masoretic mss.)
Last edited:
I read the Daiches book a long time ago. He was speculating on what was available to, and used by, the KJV translators. But he had no tangible evidence for any specific edition, and it's probable that the KJV translators used more than one edition. I think Stephanus published a Hebrew OT but I have never examined it nor seen any description of it. The Bible Society (I forget whether it was the American or the B&FBS) once published its catalog of its collection of printed Bibles, including Hebrew OTs, and I recall that more than 40 complete Hebrew OTs, and a great many Hebrew Pentateuchs and Psalters, as well as some polyglot Bibles, were published between Ben-Chayyim and the KJV.
Steven Avery
Well-known member
I'll see if I can check the Daiches book for more precise information, it seems to have very good library access on Worldcat, I think my copy went overseas. Another superb book is:
Hebrew in the Church: The Foundations of Jewish-Christian Dialogue
Pinchas Lapide
http://books.google.com/books?id=F_mUvs91FxEC
The Ginsburg book:
Introduction to the Massoretico-critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible in 1897
Christian David Ginsburg
https://archive.org/details/introductiontoma00gins
has a wealth of information.
Bernhard Pick has a 4-page review here:
The American Journal of Theology
Vol. 2, No. 2 (Apr., 1898), pp. 406-409 (4 pages)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3152780?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Also related
Introduction to the Rabbinic Bible - 2nd edition 1867
Christian David Ginsburg
https://archive.org/details/Massora....Ginsburg.1867./page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater
https://books.google.com/books?id=wMo7AAAAcAAJ
==========================================
You are referencing the second volume of the 2-volume work
British and Foreign Bible Society,
Historical catalog of the printed editions of Holy Scripture, v. 2,
This looks to be the online source, it will talk some checking to find the early Hebrew editions.
Historical catalogue of the printed editions of Holy Scripture in the library of the British and Foreign Bible Society
compiled by T.H. Darlow and H.F. Moule.
Hathi Trust
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/1299792.html
==========================================
Last edited:
The problem is that you are not speaking the truth about a sound Bible scholar.
You attempt to smear him with your non-scholarly, biased, KJV-only opinions.
You likely have not even completely read his book.
You often are merely speculating and jumping to wrong conclusions.
Steven Avery
Well-known member
It is easy to document his blunders, and the basic con he played.
There is more than his book.
And it would be best to have a special thread about his tricky con.
We had some threads on the earlier CARM, this time I will be sure to mirror the info.
Notwithstanding our differences of opinion, I am grateful to Steven Avery for providing a link to the B&FBS catalog of Bibles; the Hebrew Bibles are in vol. 2, part 2: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015035084386&view=1up&seq=154&skin=2021
I had misremembered that publlisher Plantin (not Stephanus) had printed several Hebrew Bibles.
I had misremembered that publlisher Plantin (not Stephanus) had printed several Hebrew Bibles.
Steven Avery
Well-known member
Thanks.
And I do appreciate that you actually are intent on the scholarship. We first looked up Joshua 21 in the Ben Hayim edition years ago, and I saved the picture, which was sent to me by a European poster on a forum
.The B&FBS Catalog says of several Hebrew Bibles published long after 1525 that the edition "followed Ben-Chayyim". It is therefore possible that the KJV translators were exposed to the Ben-Chayyim in the form of a subsequent edition attributed to someone else, which had been copied from Ben-Chayyim's excellent rabbinic Bible.
I think it should be said that every Hebrew Bible edition is virtual twin to every other one; the differences are so slight as to be microscopic. The Letteris/Snaith/Koren/Ginsberg/Biblia Hebraica/Jerusalem Crown texts are so similar to each other that it would take considerable expertise and effort to find translatable differences.
I think it should be said that every Hebrew Bible edition is virtual twin to every other one; the differences are so slight as to be microscopic. The Letteris/Snaith/Koren/Ginsberg/Biblia Hebraica/Jerusalem Crown texts are so similar to each other that it would take considerable expertise and effort to find translatable differences.
Last edited:
Steven Avery
Well-known member
Firefox truncates the quote box (Chrome does not), plus we need the name of James.
So here it is again, from David Daiches, outside the quote box:
===========================================
The first Bodleian (Oxford) Librarian was Thomas James (1573-1629) and there was a catalogue of books published in 1605. This would be one of the sources available to the learned men.
.
==============
"The Hebrew items in James's catalogue should therefore be fairly representative of the material available for English translators at this time. .. a cross-section ... surprisingly varied. There are several Hebrew texts of the Old Testament, of which the two most used by Bodleian readers were almost certainly those in the Complutensian and Antwerp poylglots. ... .all the available Hebrew grammars, including those of David Kimchi, Moses Kimchi, Reuchlin, Münster, Bertram and Martinius.. the Aramaic grammar and dictionary of Münster and the Aramaic and Syriac grammar of Tremellius .. copies of Targum Onkelos and Targum Jonathan, both in the original and in the Latin translation (apart from the texts in the polyglots)... fair number of rabbinical works, including some complete Talmud sets ... biblical commentaries of Lyra, Arias Montanus, Conrad Pellican and John Drusius ... Jewish commentaries, those of David Kimchi (several editions), Rashi, Levi ben Gershom, Abarbanel, and a few minor commentators ... Hebrew dictionaries, in addition to those included in the grammars already mentioned and David Kimchi's Liber radicum, there are those of Avernarius, Celepinus, and Pagninus, and the Hebrew-Latin-Italian dictionary of David de Pomis .. minor cabalistic works. ... ample scope for those translating from the original Hebrew. For a complete study of the material available for the A.V. translators, it would be necessary to examine the contents of all contemporary libraries, both public and private. (p. 165-166).
He played no con in dealing honestly with an assertion concerning the underlying Hebrew text of the KJV according to a leading KJV-only author D. A. Waite so your bogus allegation is wrong and false. Waite's book Defending the KJB was one of the main KJV-only books which Dr. Price was answering. Dr. Price clearly explained his honest points. Your bogus smear tactics are not scholarly, and they are wrong. Your continued false allegations suggest that you are more the one guilty of what you inconsistently and unjustly accuse others. You seem to try to con others concerning sounder scholarship in Price's book compared to the unsound, unreliable claims found in any typical KJV-only book.
Last edited:
Steven Avery
Well-known member
You accept everything written by Donald Waite as accurate as true?
I do not know if the "majority" of Massoretic mss contain these verses. The verses do not appear in the Second Rabbinic Bible (Ben Hayyim, 1525) - which has a footnote referencing First Chron 6:63-64 - nor in the Leningrad Codex. Ginsburg, usually a staunch defender of the Second Rabbinic Bible as the "Massoretic textus receptus", conceded that the verses were omitted by a scribal error because verse 36 and then verse 38 begin with the same word ("And out of the tribe of -"). Ginsburg said "The context itself shows that the two verse have been omitted by clerical error, since without them the enumeration is incomplete." (Introduction p.178). Ginsburg then mentions a Britisn Museum ms (Add. 15250) of high quality worked up around the 13th century, which includes the verses, including a Massoretic note cointing the occurences of Bezer. "This shows beyond doubt that the School of Massorites from which this note proceeds regarded the two verses as an integral part of the text." (p.179) Ginsburg added an impressive list of 16 Massoretic mss that contain the verses and noted that "all the early editions" prior to the Second Rabbinic Bible contain the verses. "Jacob ben Chayim was the first who omitted the verses" (pages 179-180).
